Latino college graduation rate an issue for everybody

Our leaders need to realize the emergency this has become.

By Victor Landa/Express-News

Updated 12:01 am, Friday, March 18, 2011

An education conference held in San Antonio last week was called Prepárate, Spanish for prepare yourself. But there's a very real undertone to that — more of a buckle-up-and-hold-on-to-your-hat kind of warning. The goal is to produce a 55 percent adult college graduation rate by 2025. It's going to have to be a furious ride.

The conference, organized by the College Board, brought together more than 500 educators and education administrators of all stripes and levels to look specifically at increasing Latino college attainment. It was done not as a set-aside or special program, but as a pressing need. Here are some hard facts: Since 1975, there has been only a 2 percent increase in Latino college graduation. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Latino community is the youngest and fastest-growing segment of the American population.

Most Popular

State budget cuts across the country threaten to eliminate hundreds of thousands of teachers and increase the number of students per class. Funding for college financial aid is threatened as well and could keep many minority college students from pursuing their degrees. Latino dropout rates continue at an alarming average of about 50 percent. Meanwhile, the American work force is becoming less competitive.

There's a double edge here that some folks are going to have to learn to live with. For America's sake, Latinos need to be brought up to par in education. They need to graduate high school at higher rates, go to college at higher rates and graduate from college in increasing numbers. They also need to be trained in technical fields, and this is where many Latino leaders balk.

Technical school reminds them of the days when Latinos in high school were relegated to plumbing, mechanics and other trades. It was an idea that eliminated vocational courses in public schools with the goal of producing large numbers of Latino college graduates.

But today's vocational course is not your daddy's shop class. Technical courses in high school can prepare students for anything from biomedical careers to aviation and sophisticated computing technologies. There has to be a concerted effort to educate Latinos at all levels and in all fields, and while that may look like a special consideration for a specific group, it really is in the country's best interest.

You can call the 55 percent graduation by 2025 an impossible goal; I'd say it's lofty. But you have to set your sights on something. Excelencia in Education, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, has called for 5.5 million Latinos to earn college degrees in the next nine years. The reason for the large goals over a short period of time is urgency. We know where we need to be in 20 years, and we realize what we need to do today to get there.

Our national leaders should recognize the emergency that this is and then act as if they understand what needs to be done. There is no time to wait for it to become politically viable. But that would require political courage, vision and compromise — and who's got time for that?